I have just read an article (in Russian) about the most recent weird news from N.Korea: women are (again) not allowed to ride bicycles.
After you've finished splitting your sides with laughter, allow me to explain why this is not as ridiculous as it sounds. Every town in North Korea has a "black" marketplace where people buy and sell stuff. This is the best way to obtain food, but also products such as radios or TVs.
Now, the authorities are very much against the practice, because it undermines their ideology (free enterprise - how gruesome!), but even more importantly, because people who have radios or TVs that are not government-rigged to receive only one official channel can and will use them to find out what's life like in South Korea.
So, the authorities do their best to hinder and limit this practice (for example: they have decreed that only women can trade stuff in markets; then that only women of 49 years of age or more; and then that the trade can take place only during 3 designated days a month). Of course, most of the regulations get bypassed with the help of some bribes.
Seen in this light, the anti-bicycle thing makes sense. As women are the ones who trade in the black markets, and as petrol is a rare commodity, they use bicycles to get the goods around. Without bicycles the black market sector will diminish greatly.
Okay, that was all just background. Here's the actual question. The author of the article remarks that the authorities have also tried to send teams of ideological agitators to explain to the women in the markets that private trading is bad. But he says that very few care about that argument, because "most of those who were really loyal to the [party] leaders and socialism have perished in the famine of the 90s when the food stamp system collapsed".
My question is: what is the basis for this argument? Is it indeed known the true believers in Juche were disproportionately represented among the victims of the famine? (Presumably because they were waiting for the leaders to save them, which they never did.)